10 Miles above Ground Level

About two years ago, I went to the Birmingham GW Games Day event, 2014. Amongst other things, the event included an exclusive model (as they often do) of Marco Columbo, this is apparently the second version of the character they’ve done, this one in finecast resin.

I set to work, figuring I’d try and change up my style to a more brightly coloured pallete. Hah.
About an hour into painting it I realised I wasn’t having any fun with it, set it aside and worked on something else.

Cut to Two years later.

GW:Manchester runs a Speed-Freaks competition, paint a model within one week and include the specified colour (in this case Xerius Purple) somewhere on the model.

I figured I should dig out Marco again and have another try at painting his purple britches.

This was on the saturday evening, the competition being judged on the sunday afternoon.
I spent five or ten minutes gluing the parts together, spray-based it in black and took it into the store the next day.

Two and a half hours of painting later, I submitted it to the competition.

I’m given to understand that it was a very popular result in the judging, but set aside simply because it was an exclusive model no longer sold, not for its painting standard.
So I feel pretty happy with that 🙂

I’ve been painting character models pretty much ever since.

After having done Marco to my satisfaction, I went ahead and painted Perturabo (as previously seen) and now more recently got around to some of the models of my Solar Auxilia command squad.
I’ve painted the Vexillius and the Legate Commander.
I’m particularly pleased with the freehand on the banner and the mix of tones on the cloaks and coats.

October 7th was my birthday, A great time was had, I travelled to Nottingham and played a fantastic game of Horus Heresy, I ate and drank at Bugmans, toured the newer exhibits in the museum and particularly importantly (for you dear readers) I bought myself some Birthday presents!

To-wit, Perturabo and a Land Raider Proteus.

More on the Proteus later, rest assured that post is coming.
But Perturabo I’ve wanted since I first saw him.
Lots of metals, few colours, plenty of detail, Here is a model which I felt I could do justice.
A character model in a style that matches my range of techniques to a tee.

So, over the next few days, during the course of about eight hours of painting. I toiled and produced this!

I think this may qualify as the first Primarch to be painted for GW:Manchester’s Speed Freaks competition!
I didn’t win, but then I’ve never cared about winning as much as participation.

No more talk, behold his majesty!

Honest critique: I feel his tabard needs more work, and I totally didn’t notice the hip chevrons at all.
But all in all, I’m very pleased with the result.
There will be more character pieces in future!

There are a few pictures here and there of my custom character model for my Mechanicum Magos
She’s gone through a few iterations. the broad strokes are all based on her character story.

Magos Yaena is an Adeptus Mechanicus diplomat, of sorts. Her role is to interact with the more snobby high society types, the sort who would find the pungent incence, greasy robes and stink of burnt flesh that the average tech priest inflicts on those around them to be horrifying and revolting and refuse to allow them an audience.
To that end, her cybernetics are concealed, and of the highest quality available, artfully made and decorated.
Her robes of office are crafted to fit in (at least a little) with the gowns and function-robes of imperial courts.
She is expected to be the face of the Mechanicum to these people.

So, her model depicts skirts and corsets. Her combat cybernetics resemble medieval armour plates rather than the power-armor of most tech priests.
Her face is concealed behind a protective mask to prevent scars from debris and to protect against gases and toxins in the air. as part of her duties, she doesn’t wear (or have an implanted version for) the respirator that is common to most in her order.

In her story, the forces of Chaos have come to her world, compelling her to take up arms and fight. In the midst of battle, she confronts a chaos sorcerer of Tzeentch who she manages to best in single combat.
As a parting Gift/Curse the sorcerer imbues her with a measure of his power.

Quickly realising the nature of this power and the inevitable consequences of it, she takes ship and flees the planet. Her substantial personal army travels with her.
The battles I play with my Mechanicum army chronicle her unwilling descent into becoming a member of the Dark Mechanicum (or an agent of the Inquisition, depending on the path I feel like telling the story of at any given time)

This story lets me craft dark mechanicum monstrosities as can be seen elsewhere on this blog as well as having a nominally loyalist army when I choose.
In my 30k era battles the Tahgmata Yaena fights for both factions roughly equally though I lean towards loyalist wherever possible.

Her chosen armament in story is between two and four custom crafted plasma pistols, on tabletop I typically choose to have her carry a plasma fusil or two. either way she’s a close-ranged and extremely shooty character with little melee capability.

I have written full rules to represent her story capabilities, however it’s a bit out of date.
The broad strokes are that in her Loyalist pre-renegade status she’s more focused on boosting the coordination and accuracy of her forces.
Post-Renegade, she gains a form of unstable psychic powers (easier to cancel out than normal) and her rules are much more focused on her personal capabilities.

So far I’ve made four versions of her model, The first is based on a Sisters of Battle Hospitalier. with a few bits and bobs (notably a plasma pistol) and some green-stuff.
This fairly adequately represents her non-combat pre-renegade status. it’s a butt-ugly sculpting of green-stuff, not that my later work is substantially better! I’m practicing, but ah well.

The second is based around a Dark Eldar Lhamaean character with a lot of conversion.
I use Dark eldar parts for a lot of my conversions. lots of poses and lots of nice clean lined parts.
I like the idea that this is Yaena in her battlefield pre-renegade role. This is also my tabletop model at the moment, though that’s set to change when Mk4 is finished and painted.

Third is an effort to use the New Neferata model as a basis. I got a pretty satisfactory build out of it, but I haven’t been able to decide what she should be sitting on. the Magos Prime rules say she can have an Abeyant to ride on, but that seems too small for her. I’d like maybe to build some sort of Admech Skimmer.
This build represents her as the mistress of her forces either before or after her turning renegade.

Build 4 represents her post-renegade status, she’s carrying a corposant stave, two plasma pistols (or a single plasma fusil if I want to follow the actual ruleset) and a rad grenade.
Her backpack (and Mk3’s backpack) are intended to be teleport/jet packs.
Her custom ruleset mimics the Magos in the Horus Heresy books whose rule allow him to negate victory points for killing him, he is considered to have teleported to his ship in orbit at the last moment.
I’m rather pleased with the result of this sculpt, I’m using parts from a second Neferata kit (traded from a friend) and the lower half of Isabella Von Carstein. Plus parts from a Dark Eldar Scourge kit, some 40k Cult Mechanicus/Skitarii kits and the backpack of a Grey Knights Interceptor. (interestingly, also a teleport pack, so that fits in)

On her base is her Cyber Familiar. made using a few clipped parts from the guns and backpack, as well as a couple Ruststalker hands.
I’m quite happy with how gribbly it turned out!

As to her green-stuff, I’ll be smoothing it out a bit and generally improving the sculpt later. but these are the WIP pictures.

Finally, I’ve also bought a Solar Auxilia Command squad. Just finished assembling them this evening and looking forward to painting them. Lovely models with an amazing level of detail.

Interesting tidbit. the Lord Marshal’s cloak is actually provided in two parts. but because of the clever way it’s designed it doesn’t require any green-stuff to blend it together and hide seamlines.
The collar of the cloak is part of the body and overhangs the area where the top of the cloak meets the model, so that seam is hidden, and the center-line seam down the middle of the cloak is a) very closely fitted and b) made into a feature with a lot of detail mouldings there.
I was delighted by this little bit of clever design work, whoever sculpted these guys knew what he or she was doing!

Maybe I’ll get a chance to find out, I’m going down to Nottingham on Wednesday for my Birthday! Planning to bring back a few new projects..maybe even the rest of the Warlord Titan!

I spent the past two evenings (really only four hours at most) painting the Myrmidon Destructors!

Rather pleased with the result, my Secutors wear red robes with white cogs. I decided that to distinguish the Destructors I’d invert the colours, perhaps these ones are from a different world, Metallica maybe.
I got halfway through painting a hem of red cogs before realising how much I hate doing cogs on Myrmidon robes. they’re all folds and really annoying to get looking good. So I elected to mix things up, every myrmidon now has different styles for the cogs and iconography on their robes.
Gives them some definite character to match their different armor.

Ah Forgeworld.
I love your stuff, but you’ve really REALLY gotta get a handle on the idea of Weapon Options.
Give me the ability to buy weapons seperately or give them all to me at once. The Myrmidons are the biggest pain in the ass, the secutors come with six guns, three pairs of them. comprising three of the five or six options that kind of unit can take.

Why would you leave out the Rad cleansers? you know we’ll want a fleshbane flamer over the Maxima Bolters.
And why the heck would you be so sadistic as to give enough options for every model to have different guns? nobody does that.
Units always have the same weapon on every model by preference, with the odd special weapon thrown in for good measure.
There is no circumstance I’d want to field a unit of myrmidons with two volkite chargers, two maxim bolters and two plasma fusils.

And the same problem goes for the Myrmidon Destructors. 3 out of 5 of the available weapon options and every gun provided is different…

Oh, and you left out probably the best single weapon they could take.
Graviton Imploders. The only grav weapon in the mechanicum that actually behaves like its 40k contemporaries.
Allow me to paint my dear readers a picture.
Picture a gun, it’s big, it’s chunky and very very sciency.
Now imagine that it wounds its target using the target’s armour save.
Now notice that its AP value is 2. meaning its target doesn’t get that armour save afterwards.
Notice that it’s a Heavy weapon…on a relentless Myrmidon, so it might as well be assault.
Except it’s a Salvo weapon, Salvo 4. You can safely ignore the first value because relentless means it just fires at the best profile.
And since we’re mechanicum..The Myrmidon carrying it is BS5 and it hits on 2s.
the Myrmidon prefers to fight…everything. so if you miss, or you fail to wound (at least against terminator equivelants) you simply reroll 1s.

Now pan your minds eye back and witness that there are three of them…

It should look something like this.

Yep, I bought some Myrmidon Destructors and decided that they needed to have Graviton Imploders rather than the rather boring loadouts they came with. So I pulled some spare parts off my Kataphron Destroyers. I figure the clampy claws from the Breachers will work nicely as alternatives to the industrial clamps the Myrmidons came with, rather dull parts those.
Exception to the Irradiation Engine, but I want two of those for my upcoming Macrocarid Explorator (read: Land Raider Proteus with radioactive-deathrays)
My Friday Horus Heresy battles are gonna get a bit tougher for my terminator-bringing opponents!

I bought the new Tahgmata Army List book and the Macrotek/Servo-Automata bundle when it was released.
I’m loving not having to carry a 8lb book to every game I play! having a self-contained Codex style book for my 30k Mechanicum is fantastic.
A few of the new things in the book particularly interest me.

The Ordinatus Minoris Macro-Engine

It’s like two or three Krios tanks got together and tried to lug around a warlord titan’s armaments…
Except for the fact that there are -two- versions.
One can carry a Bellicosa Volcano cannon (normally mounted on the Warlord)
The other is a Sonic cannon of such prodigous size and power that Noise Marines whimper and cry and go home. Eldar fall silent in awe, and even Goff Rockas stand slack-jawed in shock.
Draw a 7″ wide line across the table from the gun, 72″ long, or to the table-edge. whichever happens first.
Now kill roughly 5/6ths of the models under it.
Do it again, every turn. until all the enemies are dead.

I sorta want one, and I sorta don’t.

Macrocarid Explorator

In previous Mechanicum lists, they could take the Build-Your-Own Land-Raider kit.
Apparently that wasn’t good enough. Now they can take the Macrocarid.
It’s basically a land raider in all but name, but lacks the front assault ramp and can take a few weapon systems the land-raider couldn’t…
For example, sponson mounted Irradiation Engines.
Because torrents of cancer is funny 😛

I’m thinking this is my excuse to buy and convert a Land Raider Proteus.

The question remains of where to get the Irradiation Engines from, the only kit that actually has them is the Myrmidon Destructor kit. which has one in each group of three dudes.
What I’m thinking is that I can pull the irad engines off two of those kits and replace all the weapons in two squads with the Graviton Cannon, a solid and potent weapon I’d quite like to field in any case.
I can convert the graviton cannons using grav-gun bits from my bits box (I have a lot spare)
And that will leave me with at least two spare volkite culverins and two conversion beamers.
Always useful for other conversions…

But in any case. on to the matter at hand:
I made a thing.
It took me about two hours.